A cellular network, or mobile network, is a wireless communication network that may be divided into one or more geographical regions known as cells, that may be communicatively interconnected via one or more fixed location transceivers known as base stations. Through an arrangement of cells and base stations (BSs) of a cell, a cellular network may provide wireless communication coverage over a large geographical area and enable wireless communication devices, such as long term evolution (LTE) user equipment (UE) to communicate with each other anywhere in the cellular network, potentially over long distances.
Modern cells are increasing in the number of devices or LTE UEs that communicate with a single BS of a cell. Notably, the proliferation of one type of UEs, internet of things (IoT) UEs, is expected to grow to millions of such devices in a square kilometer in the next few years. As compared to existing cellular UEs, such as third generation (3G) and fourth generation (4G) UEs, the IoT UEs use smaller transmission timeslots because they send small amounts of data, usually infrequently. However, since there may be thousands of IoT UEs that a BS serves, the time and messaging overhead to set up (e.g., handshake) for the transmission of these small data messages can cripple the communication ability of the BS. For example, an increase in the number of IoT UEs of a cell can result in an exponential increase in the number of messages and time required to send separate data transmission between those devices and the BS.